


Panic

by Expecting_the_Inquisition (DeathCorporal)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Anal Sex, Background Mentions of Infant Death and Baby Farming, Caning, Crossdressing, Drugged Sex, Drunk Sex, Gang Rape, Gaslighting, Gratuitous Classics References, Kidnapping, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Non-Consensual Bondage, Oral Sex, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Sadism, Sexual Slavery, Very Occasional Use of the Word 'Gamahuche'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:00:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23240623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeathCorporal/pseuds/Expecting_the_Inquisition
Summary: An account of a young costermonger thrown together with four gentlemen of rare and discerning tastes.
Relationships: Libertine Victorian Gentlemen's Club/Hapless Orphan Boy
Comments: 16
Kudos: 66
Collections: Smut 4 Smut 2020





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reine_des_corbeaux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reine_des_corbeaux/gifts).



_Edmund had thought there was something off about the gent who had been offering charity--thought it might be some ruse to bring him up on charges. The particular charges he didn’t rightly know, of course. Still, the constable and the pub owner and that damned Mrs. Wexford who’d made arrangements for Jenny were always threatening him with charges of some sort if he didn’t move on. Vagrancy or nuisance or something--nothing he wanted to do with. He’d gone up at age twelve for stealing gooseberries, and after a month’s hard labor, he was sick of leaden bread and lice enough to decide himself reformed. It was tempting, of course--a bloody five pound note if he’d just take a walk with him up towards Bridge Street and talk a while about his “circumstances”--but Edmund wasn’t born a fool. It was that birthright that had kept him bright and bricky all these years._

_Gentlemen like that weren’t known for lurking round the Devils’ Acre for charity’s sake. Jenny’d said that girls knew better than to walk with somebody sporting polished shoes and a three nicker overcoat around the abbey, and even if Edmund wasn't a girl, he wasn’t about to take charity that would pay him back worse in the end. A hay-penny and a bun from old Billums wasn’t going to do no harm, but a whole five bloody pounds was another matter. Oh--he’d love for that much to come to him safe and honest, sure, but men who tossed that sort of cash about could be queer. Might call the law on him for theft for all he knew. Might expect something not so honest for it and call the law on him after. Might be some bloody missionary who hadn’t five pounds at all and was luring him into some dark alley to load him up with a damned stack of tracts._

_It all seemed trouble, and now that his sister had gotten her position for a year and little Jos was dead, there wasn’t anybody who needed seeing to but himself. He’d managed that well enough over the years and with less than five pounds for all of it._

_“Ned,” Jenny’d told him once. “If a nurse feeding you on icewater and treacle didn’t do you and all the cabs in Bermondsey didn’t neither, I doubt anything short of the devil will get you in the end.”_

_With that in mind, Edmund started walking east toward the Tower Gardens, hoping to see if Tanner had some news on what they could bring together to hawk. Their source of bootlaces and buttons had dried up, but it was spring, and some had made it good selling sparrows nests--a plum deal given they grew in trees. It was a warm day, and his coat was sweating him a bit. He turned the corner down Barton with a lazy swagger, whistling as befitted a youth hoping to feed himself with the labor of the birds._

_Normally, he would’ve been quick to spot the smart black hansom that had no business around Cowley. Normally, he would have taken it together with the strange man before and gotten the sense to bolt. There was something in the dusty air of a fresh thawed April though that had set his thoughts to wander, and as such, he was off his game and noticed nothing until he was in the sudden grip of a cloth pressed fast over his mouth and nose. Once it was on him, he had little time to perceive much of anything, save that the sky towards which his face was turned seemed suddenly very bright. The rag was soaked in something acrid that took him away from himself, and his eyes burned as he kicked and brawled against whomever held him. As he struggled, drifted, and fell into the dark of unasked for sleep, he just caught sight of that cab towards which his lumbering body was being dragged._

_He noticed nothing of his assailant, save for the supple touch of the soft leather glove that briefly caressed his cheek as he went under._


	2. A Little Ganymede

When Edmund awoke, he was still in darkness, although he could smell something like flowers about him, and he had the subtle sensation that somebody was with him wherever he was--that there was breath and a body hovering about the room in which he’d been laid. He knew he was in a room too. He figured after a few seconds that the place was too silent and too warm to be out of doors.

As he tried to move to push himself up, he felt the firm grip of something tethering down his wrists. There was a soft creak as he stretched. He kicked his legs to find that they were likewise bound--shackled by something that felt soft on his skin but held him fast, like it was made of the leather they used for ladies’ bags down in the shops round Green Park. It took him very little time to realize that something like it was flat pressed over his eyes as well and that more of it was pushed firm against his back on whatever surface it was on which he lay.

“Hey!” he shouted, realizing as he did so that his fear was readily apparent. “Hey, what is this?”

“Oh my!” came the voice of the unseen man observing him. “Such a gentle awakening you’ve had. I would have thought you’d be a little more coltish.”

“Mister, what is all this?” Edmund repeated, pulling at his bonds. “Why’d you take me here--I ain’t done nothing wrong--I swear.”

He felt the press of a hand against his chest. Much like the glove that had held his cheek, it gave him a quick pet as it pushed the crisp fabric of a shirt not his own against his skin.

“You haven’t, in all likelihood, done anything wrong, my boy,” the man said with a chuckle. “Although if you want to make a confession, I’m most keen to take it down.”

“If I ain’t done nothing wrong, then let me go!” Edmund shouted, kicking harder at whatever it was that tied him down. “There’s laws against this--there is--you can just--”

A hand suddenly gripped his chin, squeezing the lower portion of his face as if to part his lips.

“Tell me, dear boy,” the voice continued. “Tell me if you’re a good Christian.”

Edmund shuddered, uncertain as to what the question meant in all this but not liking it one bit. He tried not to flinch as the man’s finger slid towards the corner of his mouth and stroked the skin of his lower lip a moment.

“I don’t go to Church or nothing,” he said haltingly, “but I don’t think ill of those who do.”

“Can you tell me any of the articles of our faith?”

“Articles?”

“Tell me what you think of God.”

The man’s grip tightened. Edmund stopped to think a moment, his thoughts gliding back to all the tracts pressed into his hands despite his protestations he couldn’t and wouldn’t read them.

“I don’t rightly know, mister. I don’t have much to do with him.”

“Have you been baptized?”

“No, sir.”

“Can you tell me anything about religion at all, young man?”

Edmund felt his face grow hot. It was becoming more and more apparent to him that this man was not about to let him go, but it remained completely opaque what it could be that his interlocutor wished from him. He swallowed hard.

“I know that Jesus was killed for us, sir, and that he’s here to keep us from the Devil. I never thought much beyond it though, as I’ve never met neither of ‘em.”

There came a laugh as the hand gripping Edmund’s face let go--a self-satisfied chuckle that he did not like.

“As I thought then: one of the modern heathens crawling the gutters of our Christian nation. How delightful--that a child might still mature to a near pagan innocence in our modern age. Enlighten me then, are Mayhew and his ilk correct? Cut off from religion and degraded by street living, do you find yourself given over to all manner of abominable vice?”

Edmund bit his tongue a little, disliking that he should be interrogated in such a manner. He felt the man must mean something very specific by “abominable vice” and he wasn’t sure what he should answer.

“I’m not always as good as I ought be, sir.”

The hand on his chest moved to stroke his side, gliding over the indentations of his ribs as it caressed his flanks. He shuddered, thinking this is how you felt up a work dog or a horse when buying--not that he’d ever bought either.

“My dear little guttersnipe, let me be direct. Are you chaste? If not--which is the disappointing assumption upon which I stand--I would much like to know how often it is you embark on ventures of carnality.”

“Mister...”

“I am going to insist, child. You are in no position to dodge the question, and you shan't like it much if I don’t receive a prompt reply.”

Edmund, who just barely parsed that he was being asked if he’d done a girl yet, shook his head.

“If you must know, I haven’t. After what happened with Jenny…” He gulped. “I came up in a bad way, and my sister was done ill by a man. She made me promise not to go after girls unless I was ready to provide and...”

“Oh good heavens! You are that much an innocent?” The hand running across him suddenly went rigid, and Edmund heard a laugh of sharp delight. “A modern heathen and a virgin on top of it! It seems we truly were fated to find you, my boy--to think that Osbourne near prevailed on me to go hunt for easier game!”

Edmund trembled as he felt another hand caress his neck, pressing the fabric of a starched collar against his jaw. The material of whatever it was that blinded him suddenly felt damp, and he realized that between the pressure on his eyes and the fear of whatever was to happen, he had begun to tear up.

“My dear dear delicious boy,” the voice continued. “I hope you appreciate what a rare and brilliant gem you are in our present age. Perhaps, after this evening, we should have that long chat about your circumstances and history, eh?”

“If that’s what you’d like, mister,” Edmund said quietly. He did not like thinking as to what this all meant, but with no means of escape in sight, he’d decided it best to humor his captor. The man seemed, by all rights, to be mad. Edmund had heard once that madmen ought be humored.

“Oh, I’ll like quite a lot from you before the day’s out,” the voice replied. “I hope you won’t find yourself too indisposed later.

Edmund did not say anything, and as there was no further conversation, he assumed that the gentleman had left him to his own devices. Trying to remain as calm as he was able to, he tested the strength of his bonds again, tugging forcibly at all four points at which he was restrained while being careful to make no noise.

He had begun to conjure thoughts--terrible thoughts--as to what might be done to him: that he might end up cut up and thrown in the river like had happened near Rainham. He did not know why it was that some man had seen fit to take and tether him like this, but he knew it behooved him to get out and get back into the open safety of London’s streets, miserable though they might be.

When he found that pure force would not weaken his bonds, he tried writhing his hands out of the cuffs that held them, remembering a time when Tanner had showed him how he’d dislocated a finger getting at a grate to go toshering. Much to Edmund’s frustration, his bones remained where they ought, and he remained where he was--stuffed into some fancy outfit not his own and shackled onto something he knew not what.

He breathed deep, trying not to let himself be shaken to the point of inaction, but he knew he was crying hard now. It was, perhaps, the most minor of blessings that the blindfold should keep whomever eventually came for him from seeing him weeping. It was a thin and feeble sort of comfort, however.

Edmund did not--could not--know how long it was until he finally heard the pad of footsteps and the creak of a door opening. His heart quickened, knowing that whatever horrid thing was about to happen was about to happen soon, and that he’d manage somehow to meet it.

“Gentlemen!” a familiar voice said in greeting. Edmund, swallowing hard suddenly realized that the man to whom he had been speaking had never left--that he’d sat somewhere and watched while he had struggled and twisted and tried not to sob.

“I thank you all for making arrangements on such short notice. I really do think you’ll find the repast a most exquisite one, for all that we’ve had to make arrangements more hastily than we have in times past.”

“One can’t always stay to a strict schedule with wild game, Ambrose,” said some other man who had apparently just entered. “I for one am loathe to reject any invitation to dinner--let alone a society one.”

“Far be it from me to judge how a man takes his sins, but I hope you’ve learned to slake your gluttony after your lust these days,” said a third party. “Last time, you damn near fell asleep at the second bout.”

There was a snort and a “hem” and then some fourth party chimed in:

“We can critique one another’s conduct at another sort of meeting.” He paused, and his tone changed. “Ambrose, is there a theme to the banquet before us? Does the dish have a name?”

The man who had been interrogating Edmund a little while earlier--evidently called Ambrose--gave a sudden sharp laugh.

“Well damn it all if I haven’t bothered to ask for a name. I suppose we can leave that matter up to Osbourne, given that--host though I am--this is technically his little fête.”

“I only put in the request, Ambrose. You--you my good fellow--have seen to all the preparations.”

“Don’t be so modest! You made the suggestion. You offered up the plans. You even supplied the necessary medicine,” Ambrose laughed again. “It seems only fitting you give this little creature out of Eden a name.”

Edmund felt himself redden as it was confirmed for him that it was he who they were discussing. He thought to shout at them--to tell them who he was and that they oughtn’t speak of him as they were--but he knew it was almost certainly useless, given the circumstances.

“Out of Eden, Ambrose?”

A hand ran itself up along Edmund’s leg, and he felt himself go rigid. Ambrose--for that was who he reckoned it was--gave him a soft pat as he reached the innermost flesh of his thigh, pressing the soft fabric of his trousers and drawers against his flesh.

“A near perfect child of nature, Percy! Raised up in heathen ignorance and still untouched by heathen vices. The boy’s a gem--as I told him a little while back. I shouldn’t trade him for all the rubies in Kapoor.”

“Good heavens, have you found a little virgin for our table tonight?”

“So he claims! So he claims!” He squeezed Edmund’s thigh. “Is that correct, boy?”

Edmund didn’t have time to compose himself. He blurted out his answer like a sob.

“Yes!”

There was something like cheer and applause that went up as the word escaped his lips.

“Osbourne, you must do the full honors this night! We can’t have you fumbling about his thighs first thing; it ruins all the momentousness of the occasion if the boy’s never had it before."

“Hector, we agreed Osbourne would have his way in arranging the first tableau if his plans were to come to fruition. If he wants to do naught by stroke our little Ganymede’s cheek and pop chocolates into his mouth all night, we’ll all have to abide.”

“Do you have any chocolates, Ambrose?” the voice belonging to Osbourne said in a wry tone.

Everybody--saving for Edmund--laughed once again.

“I have whatever we can send for on short notice and everything the club has ever had at our disposal.”

He felt another hand, of what seemed a different weight and size, stroke his body, running from his hip to his chest, to rest just under his chin.

“Tell me,” Osbourne said softly, “What would you like us to call you?”

“Edmund,” Edmund said as calm as he could manage. “My name is Edmund.”

“Then Edmund you shall be called!”

He felt a hand fidgeting around the back of his head, digging into the curls of his hair as it undid a buckle of some sort. The blindfold was pulled off, and after seeing a flash of gold-green wallpaper, Edmund blinked his eyes back shut, unused to the light.

Osbourne petted his hair as he managed, painfully, to take in his surroundings. He could see now that he was indoors, in a room ornamented with peacock colors and fitted with all sorts of fine stuff of the type Edmund supposed gentlemen kept. There were a pair of arsenic green upholstered chairs across from where he lay bound, and above them a picture of some boy without any clothing who was wrestling about with a great bird. Vases and bric-a-brac of uncertain use and origin littered the room, as did fine wrought furniture he could make out here and there. Most notable of all these objects were those at the room's corners, which each had a statue of something like the devil--leering with pursed lips as it played on a set of pipes. After a few moments, Edmund realized, much to his unease, that the one thing the room seemed to be lacking was windows. Everything here was lit by gaslight.

“Edmund,” said Ambrose, whom Edmund could finally see and recognize as the gentleman with the five pound note. “I’m sure you have a great deal you don’t yet understand, and I’m afraid that you will have to learn through the rigors of regular practice.”

He patted his thigh, grinning over at the man Edmund took to be Osbourne--a goatish, lean-faced man who was still tousling his hair.

“Well then gentleman,” he said, looking about the room. “My proposal, as the inaugurator of the Aegocerus Society's endeavor to raise up poor little Edmund here, is that we should proceed in accordance with the ancients and sport with--as Ambrose so fittingly called him--our little Ganymede.”

Edmund’s breath grew ragged as he saw the expressions of the other two “society” members--the corpulent Hector and the hawkish looking Percy. They did, in fact, glance at him as if he were so much food set before them, and his stomach sank into a dark pounding knot as he saw their faces.

“We’ve already snatched him eaglelike into Parnassus. I say we give him a cup to bear.”

Edmund hadn’t the slightest clue as to what these men were speaking about, but he feared whatever it was greatly. Despite being outnumbered and having put things to the test before, he began to buck and kick wildly at his restraints. He could see now that the cuffs binding him were of a padded leather of some sort, like the thick collars you put on a rat terrier, and that he was tied down to a queer little table that seemed to have been fitted just to the length of a human body.

“Please just lemme go!” he pleaded desperately, trying as best he could to kick himself away from the men closing fast about him. “I promise I won’t tell nobody about this! I promise you’ll never--”

He was cut off when Ambrose suddenly pressed a cup of liquor to his lips. Osbourne pulled his head forward by the curls as if to bid him drink.

“Edmund, Edmund…” Hector said from where he stood with a dripping condescension. “It would not do to send you into the wide world fasting for our hospitality. You must stay and have a glass with us.”

He tried to spit out the dark sweet wine that was being forced down his lips, but found that more was poured into him the more he struggled against it. Percy and Hector moved forward, and at a gesture from Osbourne, they pulled apart the end of the table to which he was tied by some clever trick. The bottom part of it was apparently set on hinges such that two “legs” of it could be pulled away from the other, forcing him to spread apart his thighs along with them and to bend them up a little. He thought he would start to cry again as Ambrose pulled out a little knife of some sort and handed it over to Osbourne. His head swam in the midst of the wine and light, and looking to the ceiling, he saw the image of yet another horned figure staring down at him--a wretched, dancing, leering devil, who stood naked atop the ceiling, his hard and swollen prick poking out from the hair of his animal hindparts.

“Since it pleases the society, I think I will not give little Edmund the benefit of a _gradual_ classical education, tonight.” Osbourne sighed. “I would, however, like to admire him a bit first. He’s been such a patient creature all things considered, and I am one to savor the scent of a hyacinth before I pluck it.

“Please, Osbourne,” Percy said, patting Edmund’s leg, “take your time even if you know you’re sending me into a positive agony.”

Edmund was crying again now. He knew something dreadful was about to happen to him. They had snatched him, and evidently washed and dried him, polished him up and fitted him into some gentleman’s clothes, and it was all to do some horrid wickedness.

Osbourne undid a loose piece of silk somebody had tied up around his throat, and as though he were some girl nuzzling her beau, he buried his bristling chin into the soft pink of Edmund’s neck and inhaled sharply--all before licking a trail of lecherous half kisses upwards to his face. Edmund’s eyes widened as he realized how he was to be treated, and he kicked enough to make the lower end of the dreadful table wobble about. Percy and Hector were just barely able to hold it steady.

“Ambrose, a little more hospitality. We have more of that vintage in the cellar.”

Ambrose, laughing, poured wine directly from the bottle into Edmund’s mouth, and the whole of Edmund’s body froze in shock as Osbourne seized his head violently and kissed some of it from his lips. There was a polite little applause as he did so. Edmund closed his eyes as the wretched old man treated him like some common drab pressed up against an alley wall. As before, hands ran up Edmund's body, tracing his ribs, testing at the muscles of his stomach, feeling out the roundness of his shoulders. They eventually came to rest between his legs, where his limp prick hung low against the loose trousers. It twitched a little at the touch.

“My my,” Osbourne said after licking the last few drops of wine from the corner of his mouth. “I don’t think you needed our Saint-Émilion, Edmund. You seem sweet enough on your own.”

He removed his hand, and standing up walked around to where Edmund’s legs were spread, the two other voluptuaries holding them fast in place. Edmund knew what was to become of him now, knew in the roundabout way you knew from dark whispers about boys that Tanner had said were hired on for work at the docks or for doing “deliveries.”

“There’s laws against this, you know!” he shouted hoarsely. “They’ll have you in gaol if you…”

He stopped short as Osbourne reached his destination and Ambrose clapped a hand over his mouth. With a little flourish, the man took the knife in question and began to cut a long slit up the edge of the close fitting jodhpurs he now wore, the tip of it grazing his skin ever so slightly as he shouted and wept against Ambrose’s grasp.

“God, to know what that cost,” Hector commented. “The waste is thrill in itself--although I suppose that it’s hardly pragmatic to keep something fitted to poor little Philip now that Oakhurst’s decided to put him to more general use.”

Osbourne turned his head, hands still busy with Edmund as he began to tear the seams on his silk drawers.

“We will have to have him measured this week, but I think all things considered he was close enough to our little pipkin’s size that it all came off very well.”

Edmund had tried to look away by the time Osbourne had everything undone and he was fully exposed, but the only thing upon which his gaze could rest was the terrible horned figure that looked down upon him from the ceiling. He gave another shout and made another futile attempt at kicking as he felt the touch of a hand on his naked thigh. It inched forward by degrees until it caressed his ballock-sack, its thumb tracing the crease up until it finally met with his prick. With a firm, steady grip Osbourne moved to stroke him, and he felt his entire body burn in the wake of the terrible old lecher’s grip.

“Tell me boy,” Osbourne said with a soft, enthralled sigh. “Has anyone ever given you a good frigging before this?”

Ambrose loosed his grip on Edmund just enough for him to blurt out a “No!” which gave way to a sobbing “Stop!” before he was muffled back into silence.

Osbourne picked up his pace, breath hitching a little as he watched the contortions of the boy over which he loomed. Edmund felt himself stiffen in the man’s grip. He closed his eyes, trying as best he could to think himself anywhere else with anyone else--trying not to think as to how he was aching at the touch of some filthy sodomite who was probably set to wring his neck after all this was over. He tried to imagine this was some girl he’d liked--Anne from down near Illbank or that chit in Bermondsey he’d nearly had a go with last summer. It could be goddamned Mrs. Wexford for all he cared; he did not want to imagine that he was about to spend into the hands of this horrid beast of a man to the pleasure of the other devils in this room.

He was breathing hot and hard, the leather of Ambrose’s glove suffocatingly close by the time Osbourne let off. As Edmund finally opened his eyes to look over towards his assailants, he saw Percy produce a little pot of something, which was set gingerly atop the flat of his stomach. The gold patterns on the wallpaper swam around him as the wine began to hit him.

“Lord, but he’s a beautiful beast!” Osbourne said, taking the jar in hand and smearing its contents over his hands. “I really rather would like to have taken up your suggestion as to the chocolates, Ambrose. I’m serious, but I’m too much in the heat of it now to quit. God, if I but had the patience to take it all in Homeric stride, to enjoy them 'in piety without the investment of pleasure…'”

Hector chuckled. Ambrose loosed his grip again, moving away from the table. Edmund gave a weeping shout as he felt the hot touch of Osbourne’s pomade slick fingers press into him.

“Oh god!” He was in a positive fit of hysterics now. “Oh God, I beg you don’t--don’t!”

Osbourne, who was pressing his digits fast against the walls of Edmund’s flesh, did not pay mind to his pleas, although he leaned down for a moment to give the boy’s cock a brief nipping kiss before he continued to work his fingers in Edmund’s bottom, grazing against some knot within it that sent his prick twitching once more in pleasure. Edmund groaned, panting, sick with wine and with dread as he arched his neck back and wept.

“If you do want to hold off a little, dear friend,” Hector said as Osbourne withdrew his fingers. “I could season our little sacrifice up a bit for you, he has such a perfect milk white ass for having seen such rough living, and I’d love to give it a few stripes before you charge ahead.”

He moved to squeeze Edmund’s buttock with his plump fingers before Osbourne swatted him away.

“It’s no good--no good at all.” He laughed, drawing his own prick from out his trousers. “Keeping the company of fellows such as you doesn’t teach a man temperance, and I fear I’ll be a wreck from the overstimulation if I don’t spear him now.”

He moved forward against the edge of the table, and it was evident now that the object had been devised specifically for such a purpose, the two halves held in place by Percy and Hector were set just so as to allow a man access to whomever was lying upon it. Sighing, Osbourne positioned his member, stiff and swollen, against the flesh of the boy’s greased ass, breathing deep as he threw his head back to enjoy this final moment before the defloration.

The was a moment’s silence and then Edmund shrieked, falling into another torrent of unthinking sobs as Osbourne suddenly thrust the whole length of his prick into him.

“Oh God! Oh God our Lord of mysteries... “ he gasped in delight, “I hope you enjoy watching this from heaven, you wretched voyeur!”

He withdrew near to his whole length before pistoning into the weeping boy again, moaning in what seemed some drunkard’s trance at the pleasure of taking him. Edmund, bawling like a child, stiffened at the intensity of the man embedded within him for all that the alcohol softened the edges of the pain.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could spot Percy, red-faced and panting, already frigging himself furiously to the rhythm of Osbourne’s thrusts. Edmund knew it would get worse. He knew that this was to only be the start of it. He tried to go limp then--to close his eyes, give into the drink, and let them abuse and bugger him as they may--but the agonized shame of his situation kept his senses with him. After a while, Osbourne cackled as he took a particularly long plunge, wrenching his nails into Edmund’s legs as his bollocks hit the boy’s skin.

“Oh G---od!” He growled, suddenly trying to hold himself still. “I do believe Ambrose made a good assessment of his chastity; I can’t possibly imagine any of Oakhurst’s boys being such a tight fit. It’s all I can do to keep from spending in him this very instant.”

Hector slapped him on the back with a laugh.

“If you’d like me to have at him a bit, or let poor flustered Percy have a go, just say so, old fellow!”

“Have at him how?” Osbourne asked, trying to slow his breath even as he rolled his hips ever so slightly, pushing himself just a fraction deeper into Edmund’s ass. “I’m not going to cede first rights, but if you wanted to make a few stripes, I think I could stand a bit of your seasoning.”

He turned back to Edmund, hair flopped messy over his brow as sweat stained his collar. The boy winced as Hector disappeared from the room. Osbourne kept a hand steady on the leg nobody was holding as he slowly, deliberately withdrew. He stood up, barely touching the base of his still rigid prick as he groaned.

“Oh… how I would have loved to take you slow, Edmund,” he said, slipping his hand up his shaft just a little as he did so. “We’ll have plenty of time for that later though. You and I can read Plato and pour over Symonds in the lazy days to come.”

There was the pad of footsteps from somewhere outside the room. Edmund, whose cries had abated for the moment, only nodded, his head swimming in the stupor of drink. He hadn’t the faintest clue who Pladdo and Simmons were, but he knew nothing would come of admitting his ignorance. Percy, whose free hand had been firmly stroking his prick for some time now, removed it to pat him on the shin.

“Well well well!” came a voice from what Edmund presumed was the room’s unseen door, “I only happened on poor Ambrose on my way back. Trying to escape the spectacle, old boy? I know your tastes run a little more fanciful.”

There was the sudden rap as of something hitting wood. Edmund flinched.

“My tastes are quite harmonious with yours, Hector. I merely wanted to fetch something.”

“As did I!”

Ambrose laughed.

“Well if Osbourne’s allowed it, have at!” He paused. “Osbourne?”

There came a laugh from Osbourne’s direction, and Edmund numbly tipped his head back just in time for a dark piece of almost too sweet chocolate to be thrust in his mouth.

Closing his eyes, he thought about Jenny, and whether she was thinking of him wherever she was, nursing some rich woman’s baby who would stay pink and plump. He wondered if she would think as to his fate whenever she got back or if she would press on and make do--as she always did--brothers, beaux, sons or no.

He wrenched his eyes shut as Hector came round to where his thighs and ass were still exposed. As the center of the confection burst and bloomed into a wash of liquor and fruit, he felt a slender, flexible rod press itself against his buttocks, caressing him as so many hands already had that evening before it lingered briefly on the base of his slackening erection and was then withdrawn.

“You’ll let me have a half dozen, right? That’s no more than a reform school boy gets these days under the laws, and I think he warrants that much.”

“Have at it, I said,” came the jovial reply. “Just hold off if I tell you. Unlike you, I don’t fancy bottoms near thrashed to pieces.” Osbourne groaned a moment, obviously still savoring the slowed pace of his continued self-abuse. “God… it’s really such a terrible delight to watch though--just like the clothes--I feel like you’re about to scratch your name on an Elgin marble, Hector.”

Edmund felt himself grow more and more distant from the scene with each moment’s passing, but he knew well enough to brace himself as the swoosh of the cane sounded through the air.

“One!”

He yelped as it hit his flesh, choking a moment on the chocolate as Ambrose patted his hair. He’d been thrashed and beat and god knows what else in his days, but this was new--sharp--cutting enough to draw some fresh tears as it brought him back from the dark sink into which he was falling.

“Please mister…” he slurred out slowly. “Please just--”

“Two!”

He lost himself to the next strike, mouth gaping open in another shriek. Hector rubbed a hand over the site he’d hit, causing the sting of it to linger. Edmund’s entire body went rigid as he tried to pull himself away from it, wishing that he could just tumble into the dark of his own stupor and disappear from the scene altogether. As the last trace of the chocolate left his palette, he tasted something bitter underneath all the sweet--something that for all its unpleasantness still made him think immediately to flowers and perfumes as it faded from his tongue.

“Gads, Hector, look at him buck at that last one! I thought he hadn’t so much spirit!”

“Three!”

The next blow came quicker, sharper, but Edmund didn’t shout this time. His legs were numb as they kicked. It hurt as much as anything, he supposed, but the bite of the cane didn’t seem to linger as it had previously. He realized that he was suddenly very warm from the thrashing, and opening his eyes, the air seemed to fill itself with wisps of color and light, distorting the walls and their bright colors into so many sprites and faces.

“Four!”

The blow hit--perhaps others did as well--who could say? As things proceeded, however, Edmund swooned and sank--twitching but a little as he recognized each lash and drifted from the pain he knew to still be there.

“Hold off!” Osbourne said suddenly. “Hold off!”

He laughed.

“Ambrose, you sly dog!”

“I thought it would be good to see him untethered later--no slyness intended!”

“Well it’s fortunate for the poor boy at least you dosed him before Hector can give him much more of the rod--you really should have asked though.”

It was Ambrose’s turn to laugh.

“I, for one, find a thrill in crossing every boundary, even ones set by my fellow libertines.”

Edmund could feel Osbourne’s cock brushing the burning strokes that had been laid across his buttocks. Hector had apparently stopped his efforts, and he was to be fucked all over again. It was strange. It was as though he was very far away from it this time--as though the tickling brush of another man’s member against his wounds was somehow a distant and inconsequential thing.

“And all this talk about it being _my_ fête,” Osbourne said jovially, plunging in again with an almost nonchalant violence. “Lord, but he’s still tight!”

Edmund’s mouth dropped open silently and contorted as he felt Osbourne begin to fuck him again, the man’s appetite and vigor seemingly renewed by the brief interlude.

“I shall have my night, correct?” Hector said a little peevishly, evidently not thrilled to have been robbed of his full half dozen.

“Of course, of course!” Osbourne said, his fingers gripping into the reddened flesh of Edmund’s ass as he ravaged him. “Every man shall have his turn and more--that’s a club rule nobody would countermand.”

Edmund, scarcely able to consider protest or speech anymore, felt anew the horrid sensation of his own prick twitching in rhythm to Osbourne’s thrusts, to the extent that he barely noticed when somebody--Percy, perhaps?--had undone the straps about his ankles and set him loose. The result of this was not that he should flee, but that the man desperately fucking him was better able to angle his legs to his pleasure. All the while, Edmund lay there--in a stupor of drink and horror and God knew what else--his wits muddled as he tried to quell the shame of his own arousal.

“He’s getting into the spirit now!” Percy said, hand brushing his erection. “Your ‘child of Eden’ seems to have found his nature out, Ambrose.”

Ambrose said nothing in reply that Edmund could hear. They continued for what seemed a long while, Osbourne fucking him with what seemed a rapturous--almost meditative--zeal. After some time unmeasured, he hilted into the boy rather severely and all at once, lifting him by the knees up part way off the table as Edmund gave a short, despairing yelp he hadn’t known was left in him.

“Oh God…” Osbourne exclaimed. “Oh God oh God oh God!”

He slumped over onto him after that, and held Edmund still as he looked him over. Hector's face beamed with a desultory and aimless sort of triumph. Edmund thought to kick at him but didn’t, his focus too close upon the awful sensation of the man’s stomach grazing his own still-erect prick.

Osbourne, looking up at his fellows, gave another little laugh.

“A perfect specimen Ambrose--a _pisciculus_ befitting of old Tiberius’ pool!” He clumsily pulled his softening cock out of Edmund’s ass, and afterward admired his work, tracing with a finger one of the trails of his own spend that had cut across Hector’s stripes. “So, I suppose I shall dictate who has the next round?”

“You certainly shall!” Ambrose said with an almost bombastic delight. “My own slight aside, you are quite the king of the hour.”

“I think then that poor Hector should have a chance at his throat then, given that his fun on the other end was spoilt. Percy can attend to the rest of him.”

“And me?”

“You, you impudent lecher, can sit back with me and enjoy the remaining Saint-Émilion!” Edmund twitched as his bare thigh was slapped. “You’ve been very wicked, and besides, I know you’re one to have a predilection for watching anyway.”

There was more laughter, and Edmund was suddenly very aware of how hot his body felt in glow of the gaslight and under the layers of silk and brocade in which he’d been cocooned. The voices around him met, intermingled, and dissolved, and he barely had time to register that Percy was to fuck him next until the man was already mid-thrust into him, groaning as he rolled his body against Edmund’s smarts.

“Please…” Edmund breathed hard, unable to finish the sentence. “Please… mister.”

Percy grabbed him a little below the waist, thumbs pressing into his hip bones through the top of his remnant trousers. He pulled him hard into the next thrust, drawing a choking gasp that stopped short of another cry.

“No need to ask, boy--I’m sure he’ll give you all he has and more!”

He couldn’t even place the speaker this time. He couldn’t place much of anything. When somebody--Hector?-- strode over and hooked a thumb into his mouth to spread open his jaw, he did nothing more than let it go slack. He was too far gone by the time another prick was shoved fast down his throat to put up much resistance aside from a reflexive retching, and as the two men spitted him front and back, he felt himself merely drifting with them. It was as though he were somehow apart from his body--as though all the waves of pain and numbness blent together into a perfect nothing and he was only somebody watching himself.

He lay there, weeping without sobbing as they spent again and again down his throat and into his ass, taking turns frigging him as if he were meant to enjoy all this monstrousness himself. He thought to himself that it must be that he did like it someways. Throughout it all--when they undid his wrists, set up upright, bent him over, twisted and turned him and made him engage in every awful thing they wanted--he never seemed to find his focus. He stumbled and swam and allowed them everything they asked, and eventually, much to his burning mortification, he spilled against his belly, staining the top of his ruined trousers as the men ravishing him laughed .

* * *

When next he came to, Edmund was in some new room, his head pounding in the aftermath of the drink as he awakened to find himself naked and his wrists and ankles once again tethered. He could feel no blindfold this time, but he still saw nothing. As with the last room, there were no windows.

He lay there like that for a long time, shivering and sick, before there was finally the crack of a door opening, and Ambrose strode into the room and lit one of the lamps. Edmund groaned at the light, flinching as the man approached.

“I hope you’ve recovered somewhat from last night’s excesses, my lad,” the man said with a smile. “We have high hopes for another enjoyable evening--albeit somewhat more subdued in its execution.”

“You filthy buggers!” Edmund spat, some rage at the depraved indignity of the men’s crimes finally finding him. “Why--why the bloody hell did you--”

Ambrose, who had by this time strode over to where Edmund lay bound, placed his hand over his mouth yet again. He looked him firmly in the eye, speaking in a gentle tone that nevertheless bore an obvious undercurrent of menace.

“We did it because it pleases us to do so, dear boy, and it isn’t your business to inquire of it any farther than that.”

Edmund, knowing there wasn’t much else to be done, made a feeble attempt to bite at Ambrose's hand. He received a quick slap for his troubles.

“Now listen here, Edmund,” Ambrose said firmly. “If you scream and kick and make a fuss--as I said before--it _shan't_ go well for you. We are, all things considered, a very civilized sort of brotherhood, and we aren’t going to slice you to bits or drown you or do any of the other terrible things that might happen to a young man who falls into the wrong custody.”

“Civilized!? You think this is bloody civilized? Doing all that!?” He spat, but did not hit his target. Ambrose raised his hand as if to strike him, but landed no blow.

“I think that it’s going to be a very civilizing education for you in the end, Edmund. We have every intention of keeping you cleaned, perfumed, well-dressed, and lavishly attended. Osbourne, whether or not the old lecher can stick to it, has a scheme that you might be educated, and I freely admit to being an incurable aesthete who would like you to know all the pleasant particulars of sensation in addition to the ills we visit on you. You should be grateful to have the opportunity to live a little like a gentleman instead of dying young of all the manifold things that kill creatures of your type.”

“I hadn’t died yet, and I ain’t no ‘creature’!” Edmund paused and closed his eyes, his voice dropped and softened. “Please just let me go, mister… I promise...”

Ambrose laughed. “I like your sincerity, Edmund, but I’m afraid it can no longer be your business to traipse about the streets selling chestnuts and pins.” He moved his hand downward, stroking the boy’s flaccid member. “Your business now is to requite us for our patronage with your splendid bottom and your pert little mouth, and to see that our pricks are tended to with the same loving care we bestow on your general person.”

He smiled, petting the boy gently on his still smarting buttocks. Edmund gave a yelping howl, disproportionate to his pain, as he struggled once more in the vain hope that he could free himself. He no longer tried to put into words his despair or outrage; he merely screamed.

Ambrose ignored him.

“If it pleases you to meditate on your new employment, I think you’ll find the decor in your chambers quite instructive. Take a good look while you better compose yourself. The society will eventually expect you to be versant in all the forms before you.”

He smiled at the still shrieking boy, leaving him in the dimly lit room. When Edmund calmed himself enough to look about, he found each of the four walls enclosing him to be fitted with more images like the one he had stared at the night before--of devils with animal legs and monstrous parts. In each one, the horrid creatures beset some youth or another, making them engage in all manner of crimes of the same type as those to which he had just been subjected. Edmund, head still throbbing as he sank into the cool linen of the bed sheets, eventually let his screams taper off to sobs. He tried, as best he could, not to look too long on them, but invariably he found himself staring at one scene of depravity or another for want of anything else with which to occupy himself.

After some time, he screamed again, but no sound answered him.


	3. A Little Martyr

They eventually retrieved Edmund, and true to Osbourne’s word, it was a more subdued evening. He was hungry, and his limbs were numb from having been bound. It was such that he proved more docile than he would have liked when he was ushered into a great clawed bathtub to be dipped in lavender water and afterwards dried, fondled, and as per Osbourne’s instructions, measured for a new suit. In the meantime they sported with him while he was in the altogether, having him follow them about from one windowless room to another--to listen while one of them spoke as to the importance of statues or waxed eloquent about the particulars of some “philosophy” Edmund couldn’t quite reckon. They did not--that second night--fuck him again. Ambrose said that he needed some time to recover such that they might properly refine him.

“We must start with the basics. Show us how you frig yourself, boy, and we’ll work to adjust your technique.”

He obeyed, and he hated himself for it--thinking that perhaps he was some wretched sodomite all along and had never quite known himself until then. He stood there, pulling at his prick before a bunch of old devils slouching against ottomans and armchairs as they commented on him doing it. After a while, Percy got impatient with him and tugged him off on his own, bringing him to a painful, hard climax as he spent into the man’s hand.

“We can’t have you gripping _us_ like that, you little beast! We’re gentlemen of taste, not some louts desperate enough for any back alley trull!”

In the days that followed, he learned the exact sort of tastes they had all. He was told how to grip each of their members--Percy by the base, Osbourne by the head, Hector’s just barely at all unless he clapped his own fat hand around his own to help. Each night he was set back in the illustrated room that he supposed was his now. He fell into sleep looking at boys with their hands fast around the pricks of their goatish assailants, or else being buggered or made to gamahuche them. As time wore on, they introduced him to those more advanced vices as well, setting out careful instructions as to how he was to make use of his teeth and tongue, and showing him how best to relax himself that he might be accommodating. He learned, as well, to accept the bite of Hector’s cane or crop now and then--either as punishment for some infraction or as a mere unpredictable outpouring of the man’s own lusts.

The tailor’s creation arrived before the week was out, and he found himself set into clothes he couldn’t imagine anyone within a mile of the Acre having ever laid eyes on--fine stuff even better than Jenny had seen in Mrs. Verdelae’s he reckoned. It fit as if somebody’d sewn the damned thing around him, and while he was glad to be allowed to roam about these suffocating chambers in something more than his nakedness, there was a conspicuousness to the clothing that made him shudder to feel it on his skin. He knew it was not there for his benefit, and he recoiled a little whenever he stopped to look at the patterning on the gold and green brocade of the waistcoat or cravat they’d pressed him into. 

As with everything else in this wretched, sunless world he inhabited, the cloth was decorated with the images of the satyr--that strange animal that Osbourne had told him was not the devil, but rather something older than Christ and his enemies. He wept once--even at a time when he thought he’d been over weeping--to think of how terrible it was to wear gentlemen’s clothing they’d paid to have embellished with images no decent gentleman might wear in public--that if he’d go out into the street wearing it, they’d pop him off to Wandsworth faster than if he’d just been lifting gooseberries again.

Edmund felt, at times, he might just as well be another statue for them to talk over--and he frankly wouldn’t put it past them to fuck the statues. After the initial night’s torments and the weeks that followed of “education,” he was left about the chambers much like any other piece of decor. He would sit, nervous and shaking, at a morning tea, eating custard tarts dotted with berries and sugar violets. He would listen as the four of them spoke, imagining what befell Frenchmen under the capture of Dahomey amazons or waxing eloquent on the crude delights of sweeping through the Adelphi instead of the Lyceum or venting their loathing for some twit at the _Atheneum_ writing vapid pieces on Zola. Edmund--saving for the theaters--hadn’t a damned clue what they were on about, and he tried not to look at them as they chatted.

He would always listen though, for he wished to puzzle out if there was some inflection of their voice that served as warning. He could not decipher any, by and large, and was generally taken unawares when they decided to make use of him in the midst of their meetings. He would be sitting there, distant and trying his damnedest to blend himself into the flowering wallpaper, when one of them would seize him by the collar and drag him down on hands and knees to suck his prick (Osbourne with a gentle rolling tongue, Percy with a bit of teeth, Hector with a slight lingering lick down the ridge of that little bridge of flesh beneath the head). If he yelped or fought, he was in for the lash. If he didn’t, he might well be in for it anyways. Whatever the case, he would kneel there, hot and humiliated, as one man or the other wrenched their fingers into his hair to move his head, or tugged at his hands to guide them, or bent him over a sofa. More often then not, they would keep up their banter, fucking his ass or his throat while they laughed politely about what a sanctimonious clackbox Marie Corelli was or how it was a shame the Prince’s horse had placed fourth in the derby.

The one queer relief in his otherwise harrowing existence was when Ambrose took him aside to the green room with the four statues, as it had been made clear to him that any gentleman could do as he pleased there and expect Edmund’s compliance. True to his word--to his first words even--it seemed that the man _was_ interested particularly in the boy’s circumstances, and by and large did very little to molest or harm him when the two of them sat alone. He treated him, as he always had, with that menacing aura of entitlement that would brook no opposition, but it seemed wrapped in a tenderness no other man showed him.

“Your dedication to your duties is admirable, but I don’t really see what all the fuss is about having you on your hands and knees, _all_ the time, Edmund. If Osbourne wants to elevate you, the poor old pervert, he’d best have you elevated off his footstool--a boy doesn’t learn his Latin with a prick down his throat.”

Edmund had nodded, privately thinking that Osbourne’s schemes to make him literate had been the one element of his education that the society had never kept to. Ambrose, while he groped at him with obvious fondness in these private encounters, spent much of his time merely talking. Although he’d now and again take him between the thighs or spill against his chest or face, the man barely bothered to fuck him in however many weeks it was since he’d snatched him away to be used so horribly.

As such, Edmund was more forthcoming than he should have been with regards to his biography. He told him as to how his mother had “set him out to nurse” without meaning to take him back, and how poor Jenny took him after the caretakers were found to be feeding their charges laudanum in watered milk--"keep them quiet til a final silence” they’d said. He went over his years being raised by his sister, stuffing together paper dolls or costermongering, or drifting into and out of the workhouse when times were bad. 

He talked thereafter very guardedly about Jos--trying his best not to cry about his little nephew--although he said how much it seemed such a wretched thing that _he_ should live while a child with so loving a mother should fail. He related sadly how Jenny’d done what Jenny always did and made do--taking on a wetnurse position before she dried up in Jos’ absence. Edmund had stayed behind and waited, thinking they’d have all of whatever her fifteen shillings a week amounted to after a year, and that they’d move on somewhere better where they’d get set up doing honest work.

All throughout these confessions, Ambrose would nod and pet him, and Edmund, as much as he lived in fear of him and every man who was now his keeper, felt the slightest bit of comfort in having a confessor to whom he might tell his hurts. Unlike Percy, who fucked him with a rank brutally, or Osbourne, who made peevish attempts to speak some nonsense about Greece and Latin before setting on him, Ambrose seemed to genuinely have some shred of sympathy for Edmund as a person, and in his present predicament, that shred was something dear enough that he clung to it. 

It was some weeks later, when he had numbed himself more thoroughly to the particulars of his routine and had been broken of all his first clumsy attempts at escape, that Edmund finally felt that slippery affection turn into something like camaraderie. He had, at that point, satisfied the four libertines as to all points of his performance, and he was told very suddenly that evening, in the midst of a dinner of forcemeat-stuffed quail, that it had been well over a month since his inauguration. Hector was apparently to have “his night” with him, which he intended to make a far more organized affair than the chaos that had characterized Osbourne’s. Edmund, knowing all too well Hector’s predilections at this point, paled to the same shade of the white peaked syllabub on the dessert tray. He thought, very foolishly, of trying to make a dash for the one never opened door that might lead him out from the labyrinth in which they’d entrapped him.

He did no such thing.

He sat there, still as stone, and let Hector approach him, eyes down-turned as he knew the man was fond of. _“I know different men savor different fashions, but I don’t much like a boy who presumes to always look me in the eye--his face is not the part that interests me.”_ Edmund trembled as the man stroked the edge of his jaw, his breath hot with old Tokay.

“As we expected, Edmund, Osbourne has proven completely useless in providing you with an education, hasn’t he?”

Edmund, unsure what he was to do, looked to Osbourne, who gave him no cue as to what to expect. Hector slapped him.

“Osbourne is not the one talking to you, Edmund, is he?”

“No… no, sir.”

“I’m having at you tonight, and so long as I’m in power, it pleases me to extract from you that Osbourne is a showy little dissolute who prattles about the poetry he hasn’t read since his boyhood spent being buggered by Eton prefects. Can you even fumble through a first conjugation?”

Edmund looked to the ground, face flushing as he remembered all the half-hearted attempts at schooling he had been given. Hector slapped him again, and turning with the blow, Edmund saw Ambrose out of the corner of his eye, looking at him with a solemnity that did not seem in keeping with the scene.

“That’s right, the old pervert probably can’t get you to ‘amat’ without shoving his prick to chase after.” He smirked in Osbourne’s direction, and Edmund, following his gaze, noted that the man looked on with jovial embarrassment rather than displeasure. “You’ve been allowed to grow lazy and pampered, is my thought, and I don’t think having a dilettante in charge of your education here has been the cause of it.”

“Hector, I hadn’t thought you were going to make _us_ the subjects of your cruelty tonight,” Percy chimed in. “You’re being very rough on old Osbourne right now when Edmund’s right in front of you.”

Ambrose said nothing.

“I have nothing but the warmest regard for our young ward here, gentleman,” Hector continued. “This is why I think it fitting to bring him up with a proper Christian education tonight--some flavor of the old church and some flavor of the modern school hall. Something that takes a turn away from the heathen ethic none of you degenerates can cleave to with any consistency.”

“I’m sure the ancients had the same manifold appetites we do,” Ambrose said with a rather severe smile. He looked at Edmund very pointedly. “I for one don’t really see the need to keep to a strict rule of order where pleasure is concerned. 

“Well,” said Hector, “I suppose we shall see what the evening makes of our differing philosophies.”

He turned to Edmund sharply. 

“Strip and present yourself, lad. Kneel over that, and stay until I arrive again.”

Edmund, the taste of quail still on his lips, did his best to suppress a shudder as he began to remove his clothing: the cravat, the perverse little gold cufflinks they’d had made in the shape of something they called a “Herme,” the perpetually crisp and starched shirt and the grotesquely brocaded waistcoat above it: He folded and positioned it all neatly on the floor next to him, knowing that it would not do to have it sacrificed in the midst of whatever was to transpire.

He knew, even before anyone said or did anything, what was to be sacrificed.

Edmund sat there a while, knees digging into the ivy-patterned rug, while he bent his naked body over the ottoman to which Hector had directed him, the skin of his limp prick tickling against the soft fabric. The marks from the last time Hector had had at him had faded down to barely discolored blotches and if Osbourne’s assessments were to be trusted, he still looked as though he’d heal back into an “unmarked perfection.” He tried to look to the floor, not glancing to where Percy was already stroking himself. 

He felt the air in the room move as Hector returned. He did his best not to react to anything not yet commanded of him, even when he felt the man’s firm, plump hands begin to massage the flesh of his ass with an obvious and greedy intent. 

“Ambrose did a damnable bad job of it depriving me of my half-dozen that first night, and these wretched sinners have kept you so busy that we’ve barely made it up that far since.”

Edmund did not respond. He had not been asked to, and he knew that Hector liked to play games in that regard. He bit his lip as a hand suddenly struck him hard on the ass. 

“Do you think yourself too good to acknowledge a man when spoken to, you little strumpet?”

“No, sir!”

He struck him again--open handed, fast. It was clear he was trying to make it sting.

“How many stripes in a row did they let me have at you last, do you recall?”

“I think it was twelve, sir?”

“Twelve?” Do you heard that? A schoolboy could once get more than that for blinking the wrong way--and here we have a beastly little lad whom we have every leave to handle like the roughest convict in Australia, and _twelve_ is all you give me?” 

“We’re very sorry, Hector,” Percy said in mocking apology; _however_ can we make it up to you?”

“You can make it up to me by holding him still.”

Hector’s voice was cold, and Edmund tried his best to suppress all the fight in him that had taken the reins that first dreadful night--the sense of indignation and the hope of escape. He found himself shaking as Percy and Osbourne grasped at his legs, and did not cease until Ambrose gripped his wrists and in doing so stilled his hands. He balled them into fists as he closed his eyes.

“I’m going to give you the thrashing of your life, boy, and I want you to know that going in.” Hector’s voice sounded like a judge's giving an order of execution. “Do you understand?”

“I haven’t done nothing, sir” Edmund said suddenly, trying not to sob. “I haven’t…”

The first blow came suddenly, and Edmund choked a bit as he tried not to scream. It stung severely, as though the man had put his whole arm into the swing.

“One!”

Edmund did not follow up with a please. He did not try to make things change course. He braced for the next blow.

“Two!”

He jerked a little with this one, and his prick bobbed a little against the soft ottoman as he did so. Perhaps it was in anticipation of all the ill use that was to come to him that he felt it stiffen, knowing that somewhere in all of this he would be stroked and fucked and subjected to all other manner of wretchedness--knowing that some filthy part of him would enjoy it.

“Three!”

Edmund finally gave a half-shout, a little yelping scream that followed a sharp escalation of breath. He felt his calf go rigid as Osbourne held it in place.

“Christ, look at him bear it,” Hector said in elation. “I suppose you did put a little Roman into the boy in the end, Osbourne.” 

Edmund bowed his head, face hot.

“Four!”

The cane broke as Edmund cried out in proper, unvarnished pain.

“Five!”

Hector, barely pausing, laid into him with something larger, firmer-- something that left a blunter sense of agony that cut across his present stripes and lit them all ablaze. 

“Six!”

He tried again to revert to a stoical silence, and he failed. He could feel, however, the slight touch of Ambrose’s gloved hand caressing his wrist, a soft flickering gesture that seemed to be one of reassurance for all that it reminded Edmund of those awful first moments of their first meeting.

Seven. Eight. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty-seven. After a time, what did the number matter. Edmund had taken to screaming proper at some number he didn’t recall--all his reserve from the past month of use falling apart as Hector did his utmost to cut him to pieces with so much rattan and wood. His bottom, his thighs, the undersides of his knees, even a few times on the soles of his feet--there was no portion of his lower parts that the libertine saw fit to spare, and the first cane breaking over his sore body did not prove to be a solitary occurrence.

By the time Hector finally let off, taking Edmund with all the rough violence one might imagine of a man who had done his utmost to lash a boy to pieces, the sensations of the carnal act itself seemed a muted afterthought. Hector’s prick ramming sharply into him seemed just another one of his pains, changed only in that it pressed into that unknown _something_ somewhere within him that sent his own prick quivering.

“God! Look at him,” Hector grunted, gesturing at the others to change their positions to better look. “The resignation of a martyr! The humility of a penitent! I could have him reciting Cicero on command in a month’s time if you let me lay into him proper, Osbourne.”

“Far be it from me to question a fellow libertine’s methods, but I should prefer a dullard with all his parts near perfect to a limp little thing speaking Latin while his lower quarters are all a mess. You’re making a positive chimera of him--a man atop and a monster on the bottom--and it _isn’t_ to everyone’s tastes, you know…” Osbourne, who had taken all of Hector’s jibes in stride throughout the affair, seemed a bit curt in his reply.

Hector, largely ignored Osbourne’s response, spearing Edmund’s ass with renewed vigor as the boy let out a hoarse howl from the pain of being jostled about. Even in the midst of all this suffering, Edmund’s fixation was again on his own stubborn arousal, the awful feeling that a man who seemed intent on slicing the flesh from him should wring an erection out of his suffering. He closed his eyes, trying in vain to think he might be anywhere else. It was all a muddle, though. He did not like thinking of the people he had known before--not like this--to think of sporting with girls around Miles End or to imagine talking to Tanner by Blackfriars or to even dwell on a memory of Jenny was all to bring them into this horrid world that he now inhabited, and he did not want to dishonor them by doing so.

It was as if he were caught in that first wretched evening again--the pain Hector had visited upon him standing in for the wine that Osbourne had shoved down his pleading lips. Everything fuzzed, grew distant, shifted as he groaned in rhythm with Hector’s brutal, staggered thrusts. Hector was not by any means a man of overample parts, but he plunged his stubby, fat member into Edmund as though it were a new lash with which to mark him, drawing an arm around his neck to drag him and his welt covered body back into the violence of each fearful lunge. 

“He’s to _my_ taste’s you know, Osbourne, and I’m fine with that.” Hector said stubbornly, his other hand fumbling about to stroke Edmund’s pained erection in tune with their fucking. “We can’t all be artists with some grand vision or what have you--I’m just a simple man who likes a purpled ass and a plump boy attached to it.”

Edmund gagged out something in response, a barking shout made of words he hadn’t quite put together. He was soon stopped in his endeavor by Percy, who with barely a nod to Hector popped his prick in between Edmund’s lips and tugged him forward sharply, sighing breathilly as the boy’s teeth just grazed the skin of his shaft.

“Take old Percy here: a man with a singular mind for vice! It’s admirable, you know. Doesn’t need much more than a hot pair of lips or a tight bottom to bury himself in and he’s happy as a lark.” He pushed hard into Edmund, who felt as though the hot stinging of his wounds had spilt over into the rest of him: as though the fire from his bruised and battered buttocks and thighs had lent its heat to the erection Hector was so vigorously tending.

“I wish sometimes,” Hector sighed, his hand stroking Edmund’s throat as Percy rammed his full length down it. “That I could have that same simplicity of spirit when it comes to my passions, but as it is, I try to keep it straightforward.”

Osbourne did not offer another reply. Ambrose, however, who had moved himself about considerably to keep up his grip on Edmund’s wrists, gave a long and pointed glance in his direction.

Through the gagging pain of it all--the welling nausea at the string of his hurts and the agony of his violation--it struck Edmund very suddenly that Ambrose had been silent since before all this wretchedness began. He looked back to him, as if trying to communicate something--to speak some word from out his eyes.

Ambrose, noticing, loosed his grip on the boy’s hands, watching as Edmund slumped into the panting, agonized furor of the two men who spitted him. It was no great comfort to have the use of those limbs returned to him, for he knew all over again that fighting would be useless. However, he thought in that moment that he had been done a very great kindness.

“God! It’s a shame that I’ll have to wait so long to have him done up like this again,” Hector said, groaning as he near withdrew the entirety of his prick and rammed it fast back in again. “I should thrash to bits a boy each day if nature would land one in my lap, and it’s such an agonizing sort of pleasure to make do with one who has to be put back together before I can go at him again.”

Edmund positively convulsed. He tried, as he had grown wont to do, to stifle such reactions, but as he spent the rest of the evening in that wretched agony--twisting in the swelling crush of his hurts as Hector fucked him and one man or another made use of his throat--his prior training seemed quite lost on him. He made clear the extent to which each action pained him, and Hector gave him a fair count of strokes and slaps further before he finally spent himself in him, wrenching his own wretched climax from him at the same time before he left the boy in a collapsed heap upon the ottoman. He invited the other members to finish as they might, enjoining those that didn’t want to end in his much abused ass or throat to make some decoration to assist in his work: adding their spendings to the mottled painting he had already drafted across the boy’s flesh.

It was only later--much later--when Edmund found himself being peeled off the floor to be cleaned and tended to, that Ambrose finally addressed him, touching him lightly where he’d spent on him in the midst of the revel. 

“Not all the rubies in Kapoor... I said.” He patted him softly, toweling some of the mingled sweat and semen off of him. “You are really a brave little thing for all we put you through.”

His voice was soft, and Edmund felt only a faint shame in thinking that he imagined some kindness in it.


	4. A Little Nymph

They almost let him be over the next few days, only demanding a brisk frigging or the occasional gamahuche from him. Osbourne treated him with a particular dotage, trying his best to take care with his injuries. He spent some time reading at him from lengthy boring books about the “ancients” he was always on about--evidently in an attempt to show up Hector in light of his chastisements. Edmund tried to appreciate it. Hector himself, who had overseen all of his hurts, at least seemed to use a particularly gentle touch in admiring them.

Edmund, who had done his best to still his thoughts of ever being at liberty, took as much pleasure as he could in the respite. He ate more than he had in times past, and on occasion even made the timid request that they give him a bit more, reckoning that if they were so intent on keeping him in luxury, he might as well take what scant indulgences he could. They snickered in bemusement as he roughly devoured a whole jelly himself one night. He barely gave their jibes about it any mind, even when they held him down and chased after it with their spend. It was more jelly than he would have been eating otherwise. As Ambrose had once told him, this was--in its own way--the opportunity to live a little like a gentleman.

It was strange to him that some weeks later--when the marks Hector’s debauch had left were a dark, blotchy pink again--that it was Ambrose who should propose to him living otherwise.

“I don’t know quite how to say this, Edmund,” he said during one of their private interviews, his voice all gentle as he petted the boy on the thighs. “But I have been giving you much consideration at cross-purposes with all my initial intentions for you.”

Edmund straightened, not saying anything in response but evidently all at attention for whatever his captor was about to say.

“Don’t mistake me Edmund, I have enjoyed you-- _deeply_ enjoyed you--and should love to have you remain. However, circumstances are such that I fear we will be parting one way or another, and I have grown fond enough of you that I’d like it to be as pleasant as possible for both of us.

“Sir…”

Ambrose hushed him, putting a hand to his lips. He lowered his voice.

“There’s been talk that we might be discovered, Edmund.” He sounded deathly serious now. “That we might _already_ have been discovered. It wouldn’t do for any of us, and if Hector has his way of it, it _especially_ would not do for you.”

Edmund’s eyes widened, and he felt his stomach sink as Ambrose lowered his hand to the edge of his neck, caressing the vein through which he could no doubt feel the pounding of his heartbeat.

“I said very honestly to you that I thought us a ‘civilized’ brotherhood, Edmund, and I should not like to be proven a liar on that count. If I wholly recall that first evening--and I _do_ recall it frequently, I assure you--you made a brief, desperate promise that you shouldn’t tell anyone what had happened if you were set at liberty.”

He kissed Edmund warmly, and the boy did his utmost to be warm back. He did not need to have the particulars of what was being discussed spelled out for him, nor did he ask for details; for all he had once been innocent, he still tried to tell himself that he was never truly a fool.

He wanted very much to be free, and more than that, he wanted to be alive. He knew neither of those would be likely if the men who held him thought he would be found.

“I did say that, sir,” he said solemnly when their lips parted. “I meant it very much.”

“I imagine you did.”

“I would also mean it very much now, sir.”

Ambrose paused, unbuttoning Edmund’s shirt as he leaned him back against a wall, hands caressing the gaps between his ribs. Edmund tried to make himself agreeable, hitching his breath and making a soft moan as the man who had kidnapped and imprisoned him trailed kisses across his chest.

“You’re a very beautiful boy, Edmund, and I’d hate to see anything beautiful spoiled or destroyed. You mentioned you had a sister working out north?”

“I did, sir. She’s with a Mrs. Verdelae.”

Ambrose removed and discarded Edmund's shirt, allowing his hands to roam down to his trousers.

“Good. And you think Jenny would lend you aid if you sought her?”

“She would, sir. We’re all the other has.”

“And if somebody could arrange for the two of you to meet with funds equivalent to the rest of her term of employ?”

Edmund gasped, trying to balance thoughts of his sister with his reactions to Ambrose’s groping. He was exultant at the mere suggestion of what was being proposed. It was difficult to keep up all the pretenses of engaged arousal that made Ambrose happy with the thought of escape hot in his brain.

“I’d like that…” He gasped as Ambrose began to frig him. “I’d like that very much, sir.”

Ambrose smiled.

“I’ve always treated you gently, Edmund--perhaps not always nicely, but gently, haven’t I.”

“You have, sir!”

“That first night, you know, for all my bluster and showmanship I really _do_ think it was pity that had me dose you. Knowing the way Hector carries on...”

He pulled Edmund over hesitantly--as if trying to demonstrate his gentleness. Edmund did his utmost to give off the semblance of enjoyment as the old sinner fumbled about and started stroking his prick. With a soft sigh, he tried to turn his thoughts towards ones that would get him stiff.

“I’ll have to get you out without the others noticing at first.” He punctuated the statement with a brisk little tug. “Just try your best to be awake and ready for as long as you can when we put you to rest this morning.”

“Thank you sir,” Edmund said, voice cracking ever so slightly. “I’ll be ready.”

“You’ve been a very agreeable boy as of late,” Ambrose said affectionately. “I have every reason to trust that you’ll keep true to your word.

All the rest of that afternoon--while Ambrose toyed with him--Edmund found himself near able to believe he enjoyed being groped, prodded, and fucked. The thrill of hope had made Ambrose almost attractive.

* * *

It was, perhaps, the first Edmund had been made aware that he was confined to his chamber at sunrise rather than sunset, and that knowledge, he imagined, made it a little easier to fight sleep as he waited for whatever was to happen. He thought of what it would be like to be out in the daylight again--to breathe the sooty London air and see the blinkered sun struggling to get through. His body seemed to be stretched taut all throughout however many agonizing minutes or hours it was that he waited in that room, eyes--as always--drifting to the images of satyrs at play. He tried to tell himself that these were things he’d never have to do again. He tried to tell himself that this was the last time he’d have to look at all this awfulness and know it would be done to him.

The door opened. A crack of light fell across his face. He didn’t breathe until he saw that it was--in fact--Ambrose, carrying a little bundle of something in his arms.

“I suppose this will be our goodbye,” he said, leaning over to give him a quick kiss. “Everything’s arranged for. I’m going to have you dress as one of the charwomen we hire for the main room and have you slip out that way. There’s a carriage outside that will take you to where you need to be.”

Ambrose laid the clothing on the bed and began to quickly undo the boy's bonds, taking only an occasional moment to run a hand over the body he had resigned himself never to enjoy again.

“I don’t know how to thank you, sir,” Edmund said, voice on the verge of a sob. “I can give you a quick’un if you’d like before I go.”

Ambrose grinned, and Edmund felt the full shame of what he’d just said wash over him. Here he was, naked and on the verge of breaking down, and he was all but eager to stuff himself into a dress and give the man who had kidnapped him a final frigging before he took off.

“My dear dear Edmund,” Ambrose said softly, stroking his hair as he undid his last cuff. “You have no idea what a thrill that would give me--but I fear my vice for this morning is going to be my charity.” He picked up a chemise that lay crumpled on the bed and bade Edmund slip it on.

“Let’s see if I have you fitted right, my dear.” He smiled as the boy began to dress.

Edmund would have felt some embarrassment at being made to fit himself into a girl’s knickers and skirt had this been in some kinder phase of his life, but he was beyond such things now. The dress did turn out to be small, which Ambrose remedied as best he could with a corset, tugging the laces tight until the whalebone pressed him into a shape just slim enough to keep all the seams intact. He did his best to adjust to the shallow, short breaths needed to keep himself together, and suddenly had an inkling as to why rich ladies were always throwing themselves onto sofas fainting.

“Well, don’t you look quite the splendid little miss?” Ambrose chucked as he gave Edmund a quick pat on the buttocks. “If we had much of a fancy for girls, I should fear one of us should catch you up all over again.”

Edmund nodded, trying to suppress a shudder, and did his best to keep still as Ambrose slipped a cheap horsehair wig over his head, the millinery wire biting ever so slightly into his scalp. He was led through the club chambers, stepping as quick and quietly as he could, and finally--finally--he was pulled through the door never opened. He blinked a little as he was made to descend the staircase it led out upon. The room in which he now stood had windows, and the overcast light of day that shone through them was enough to set him on the verge of tears all over again.

“Now,” Ambrose said, pulling an envelope from his waistcoat. “This should contain a letter explaining everything to Mrs. Verdelae and this--” He produced another envelope, thicker this time. “--should have that five pounds I promised you and much more.”

He dragged Edmund to the door, and the boy felt a dizzy wave rush over him as he saw the promised carriage waiting a little ways down the street. He barely parsed things when Ambrose shoved the two envelopes into his hand and pulled him into one final, deep kiss before escorting him outside, walking him down to the brougham, and giving some quick command to the driver as to where the young lady was bound.

As they started off, jostling about in the air and light, Edmund could see Ambrose standing still beneath the streetlamp where they parted. He thought briefly about trying to remember some detail of the location--to try to figure where he had been kept in the interests of having them all given justice someday--but the idea slipped from him quickly.

In addition to feeling some strange sense of gratitude to poor old Ambrose, he was bone tired to bother with vengeance, and the corset that was pressing the air from him didn’t do much to keep him on the alert. After a few miles of jostling to the wobble and bob of horses in motion, he found himself falling into that strange sort of sleep where you tell yourself you aren't yet sleeping--vaguely aware that he was moving, but already midway into dreams.

* * *

When he came to, it was at the entrance to a large house of some sort, and he looked about to see that he was no longer in the city, but in some place very green. The driver--who had coughed and “ahem”ed his passenger into wakefulness--was at the door, gesturing for him to get out.

He stepped into the warm air with a dizzy feeling of elation, noting that the sky had gone blue and the sun was high and gold within it. Stumbling out a thanks, he let the man escort him to the door.

“They’ve been told to expect a visitor,” the driver said. “The man at the door is in on it and should get you to whom you need to see--just keep your head low lest the family notice you being shuffled into their kitchens. They’ll get you to the missus with your letter once you’re properly a boy again.”

Edmund blushed a little, but gave a nod, and swiftly went to pull the bell cord as the driver left in relative haste. A lean, balding domestic opened the door, and looking about quickly, ushered Edmund inside.

“I was told about your situation,” he said in a low voice, taking Edmund by the hand and leading him towards some unknown room. “Hopefully, you’ll find yourself in better straits soon.”

He nodded, taking as deep a breath as the corset would let him as he was led into what he imagined would be the scullery or some room set aside for servants. He thought, with a sense of awful trepidation, that it might be his sister who awaited him there.

He froze the moment he set foot over the threshold, all the bright hope of a tearful reunion draining from him as he entered a richly decorated gallery of some sort. The door clapped behind him.

All around him, milling about every corner of the wide marble-floored room, were men. Each and every one wore a mask bearing a leering, horned face he knew all too well.

“Gentleman!” said one at the forefront, raising a hand in an oratory gesture. “Our nymph has arrived!”

In his wild terror, Edmund barely recognized Ambrose’s voice.

He screamed and struggled after that, the air knocked out of his lungs as the great assembly fell upon him, holding him aloft and laughing as had the men in pictures Osbourne once told him featured Romans and Sabines. They gripped him, tugging at all four of his limbs to the extent that he feared he might be torn to bits along with the cotton of his dress and drawers. In the panic of the moment, he near lost sense of his faculties, and it was through convulsive sobs that he recognized the familiar press of his captor’s flesh against his own, his body remembering when his mind would not.

“A sweet triumph for all chapters of our society to be sure!” Ambrose said gloatingly. “It shall be a revel remembered, I think, for many years to come!”

He barely knew what befell him after that. The hands of so many satyrs held him fast as Ambrose once more caressed him, and the crowd around him was thick with jeering chatter as to every man's intentions. They had rent apart good portions of his dress and underthings. The wig had been torn from his head. As Ambrose pulled up the torn lace of his petticoats to grope about for his prick and ass, Edmund shouted at him in wild despair.

“Why!?” he screamed. “Why in God’s name would you do this!?”

From behind the mask, Edmund could see Ambrose’s hard, bright eyes narrow as his smile broadened. He felt a familiar hand grip his cock and begin to stroke it briskly. The horned figures around him groped at him: at his splayed thighs, at the muscles of his back and arms, at every portion of him they could lay hands upon.

”Now now, Edmund,” Ambrose said, tightening his grip to an almost painful degree. “I thought we established early on in our relationship that you were quite ignorant of God.” He moved to undo his own trousers. “I imagine at this point he must remain quite ignorant of you.”

”You bloody bastard! You fucking per--”

Somebody clapped a hand over Edmund’s mouth, evidently at Ambrose’s signal. He leaned forward, the tip of his stiffened cock pressing against the boy’s thigh as he continued to frig him.

”As to our more recent conversations, Edmund. You will recall that this morning I told you my vice for the day would be charity. I suppose that is after a fashion true. I am, as Hector has made complaint of many a time, far too particular in my tastes.”

He left off stroking Edmund rather suddenly, and positioned himself at his entrance, the greasy feel of pomade sticking slightly at the skin. Edmund threw back his head, eyes closed, and sobbed into the hand of some unknown reveler.

"To give, my dear, is to have all the more that one might take. All creatures, I must reckon--” He thrust inside him very suddenly, grunting a bit as he did. “--enjoy a well-fed quarry at the end of the hunt. I myself like to despoil something that has battened on hope."

Edmund sobbed, tensing as the throng of men began to push him about with the rhythm of Ambrose’s thrusts. He was backlit in the bright daylight of the windowed gallery, making his figure appear all the darker and more devilish.

”To have the whole chase over and done with is fine, of course--but to relive that moment, that instant of triumph for the victor and panic for the claimed… Gods... “

He hilted into him particularly deeply, eliciting a stifled sob from the boy. The men who held him seemed to tighten their grip on him as his body went momentarily rigid. He realized that several of them already had their pricks out, frigging themselves in obvious anticipation of their own triumphs to be enjoyed.

”And that, my little nymph.. that is the whole philosophy of satyrs is it not? To chase and catch and then chase all over--to enjoy the frenzy of rapine again and again--to hollow out their beloveds until they are pipes upon which any man might play.”

He picked up his pace, throwing his head back in bestial abandon. Had he been able to, Edmund would have screamed.

The rest of them had their turn with them. Edmund saw the sun’s full course in that room as he was passed about from one cluster of celebrants to another. They praised him, petted him, and took possession of him in every filthy way they could imagine--man after man after man filling his holes and covering over his skin with spendings. Every torment his captors had ever subjected him to prior seemed to be visited upon him all over the course of one day. They raped him, flogged him, frigged him until he thought he hadn't seed left to spill. In the midst of it all, it seemed that he would split apart--that he would be scattered to pieces in the midst of so many bodies tangling with his.

The nip of the whalebone, the hot pain of his violated body, the burning thrill of his own engorged prick--it took on meaning he had not known before and could not name--something deeper than the trance of drink or the numbness of pain. When finally the sun had set and they laid him to rest on the cold floor, limp and trembling, he looked up at the ceiling to see that self same wretched figure that had greeted him on his first night among his masters: the image of a horned man looking down upon him. As Ambrose, laughing, knelt down once more to catch him in his arms, Edmund heard himself laugh back.

Beast or man or something else altogether, the creature above him commanded its due.

**Author's Note:**

> See my [profile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeathCorporal/profile) for notes on remixes, podfic, derivative works, and constructive criticism.
> 
> * * *
> 
> This is technically set in the 1890s, given that its clearly post Symonds, has sniping about Corelli, and mentions the Franco-Dahomey war. However, there may be some clashes between the historical particulars surrounding the incredibly Dickensian Edmund and those surrounding the four Age of Decadence baddies. If I've done my research right, though, most lapses are probably concerned with minor things like the poverty levels of particular London locations. Edmund tends to remember a London in keeping with Thomas Mayhew's _London Labor and the London Poor_ and Dickens' _Bleak House_ (1850s-60s), although the _Esther Waters_ (1894) beats from his backstory (namely the baby farming and the wetnursing) should be somewhat more contemporaneous with the fin de siecle libertines. The Pan motif also looks forward--just a little--to eventual Edwardian interest in Pan as a literary figure, and I'm sure we can all imagine that Ambrose & Co read some Machen in the process of putting together their depraved rape club. There is also obviously a little bit of Sade's _120 Days_ mixed into the DNA here, given the quartet of libertines and the stylistic progression of kinks, but I tried to make this a softer, gentler account of brutal sexual slavery than is presented that particular work. Lastly, I wove in a little bit of the sexual language from _Sins of the Cities on the Plain_ and works typical of _The Pearl_ , but I tried to limit the "gamahuches" to a few mentions in less explicit scenes.
> 
> Sadly, my book on the history of Victorian clothing is sitting at the reserve desk of a library I can no longer enter, so Edmund's dick covered waistcoat and dick-inspired cufflinks are borne entirely of my imagination. The dress I left largely undescribed, but I figure it's plain and relatively typical of the working class; I was a little hesitant to put poor Edmund in 1890s mutton-chop sleeves, fond as I am of them.


End file.
